This Dog Walked Onstage During a Concert and Instantly Stole the Show

Classical music's Public Enemy No. 1 has floppy ears, wags a tail, and will not be restrained.

That's what we serious classical music aficionados from around the world learned this week, anyway, via damning video evidence from a ticketed performance by the Vienna Chamber Orchestra at the Grand Theater of Ephesus in İzmir, Turkey. To the audience that had sat down, it was to be an innocent night of watching and listening to an orchestral performance at the 31st International Izmir Festival. For this hardened quadruped, it was an opportunity to spit in the face of culture itself.

Just kidding. This dog is the single most adorable thing to happen to orchestral music ever, and he stole the damn show. Just look at those eyes. How could you not applaud?

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The audience to this performance of Felix Mendelsshohn-Bartholdy's "Italian" Symphony No. 4 certainly couldn't contain itself. Breaking every norm of decorum, they laughed and cheered and clapped for the dog and the orchestra alike. The musicians, for their part, took not pause and hardly missed a beat, even as the dog walked across their stage with furry inquisitiveness before circling up near the conductor and sitting his butt down to enjoy the show with the rest of the crowd.

Fazil Say, the pianist behind the evening's performance, later took to Instagram to comment on the dog's presence: "Cutest moment in classical music," he wrote. "The most adorable classical music fan. Audience and the orchestra welcome the special guest. 😍 😍 😍"

It's not exactly clear how Fido here happened upon the stage when he did. Stray dogs in certain Turkish cities are known for wandering around and getting themselves into kooky situations, but we haven't known many of them to invade the hallowed halls of concert performance spaces.

But why not? Dogs can appreciate music along with the rest of us, after all.